NFL team name will change

Monday

Nov 4, 2013 at 6:04 AMNov 4, 2013 at 10:41 AM

By Clive McFarlane

Never say never. Dan Snyder, the owner of the Washington professional football team should know this. The founding owner of the team, George Preston Marshall, made that mistake when he declared that blacks would never play for his team.

Well, we know how that turned out.

Now Snyder is telling everyone who asks that he will never change his team's racist name. Native Americans have beseeched him. Scribes and journalists and others in the media have called him out. Members of Congress have expressed their displeasure, and President Obama has noted that if he was in Mr. Snyder's shoes he would do the right thing. But Mr. Snyder remains defiant.

“We'll never change the name. It's that simple. NEVER — you can use caps,” Snyder said in one interview.

He was more diplomatic, but no more obstinate in another interview.

“After 81 years, the team name continues to hold the memories and meaning of where we came from, who we are and who we want to be in the years to come,” he said.

Well, the team's name comes from a racial slur for Native Americans. It is currently defiling the character of his team, and it should not be allowed to linger in the years to come.

Mr. Snyder seems to take solace in the fact that amajority of Americans, including some Native Americans, do not find the moniker objectionable. But ignorance of racism doesn't make it right.

“The term … was and is a pejorative, derogatory, denigrating, offensive, scandalous, contemptuous, disreputable, disparaging and racist designation for a Native American person,” a group challenging the team's nickname in court said in their petition.

The petition contends that the name breaks a federal law prohibiting the registration of trademarks that are scandalous or disparaging. Native Americans filed a similar petition in 1992 and the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board ruled in their favor.

The Washington football team appealed the ruling to the U.S. District Court, and won on the findings that the plaintiffs waited too long to challenge the trademark. The court did not rule on whether the name disparages Native Americans.

There are many reasons to believe that Mr. Snyder is swimming against the tide and will eventually have to break his vow not to change the team's name.

Public pressure is building against him, with more than 100 Native American organizations and other groups protesting the continued use of the name. Media outlets such as the San Francisco Chronicle, Kansas City Star and Portland Oregonian have stopped using the name in reference to the team.

But if Mr. Snyder won't change the name out of goodwill and empathy, he should be forced to change it out of economic necessity. The National Football League is propped up, as Gregg Easterbrook noted in a piece he wrote in The Atlantic, by taxpayer money that goes into stadium construction and expansion; by a nonprofit status, and an “antitrust (that) law doesn't apply to broadcast deals.”

According to Mr. Easterbrook, the federal government recently gave the football team $4 million to update its training facilities, despite Mr. Snyder's having a net worth of about $1 billion.

If Mr. Snyder continues to be obstinate, Congress and the community should stop their financial support of his enterprise. In 1961, the federal government threatened to bring a civil rights suit against the team if it did not start using black players.

The next year, Mr. Marshall saw the light, and his team became the last in the NFL to integrate. Mr. Snyder will eventually see the light. Trust me.

Contact Clive McFarlane at clive.mcfarlane@ telegram.com

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